Carpet tufting machines are relatively compact devices. However, substantial space within a carpet production facility is required for the entire tufting process. In addition to the space occupied by a tufting machine (i.e. the tufter) itself, there must be roll-up or additional processing equipment, or both, positioned downstream from the tufter.
Substantial additional space is required to supply yarn to the tufter. Yarn is typically supplied directly to the tufter by one of two methods. It may come from a “creel,” which is a rack holding large bobbins or packages of yarn that spool off of the bobbins and into the tufter. Conventional creels occupy substantial floor space “upstream” from the tufter because of the size of the packages or bobbins of yarn and the space needed to hold them so that the many separate strands of yarn can be pulled off the bobbins and fed into the tufting machine. The floor space required by a standard warper and creel is on the order of 2,000 square feet.
Alternatively, yarn can be fed to the tufting machine from a “beam,” a large horizontal mandrel onto which multiple strands of yarn of the needed colors are wound in advance. The yarn strands are then unwound simultaneously from the beam into the tufter. While beams typically require substantially less space immediately in front of the tufter than conventional creels, substantial space is needed, and significant work is required to prepare the beam, because in order to position yarn on a beam, bobbins or yarn packages must be positioned on creels to “feed” the beam, much as the yarn packages would be positioned to feed a tufter directly.
A significant challenge to carpet manufacturers is to reduce the amount of yarn waste occurring in the manufacturing of carpet. Wasted yarn can occur in several stages during the manufacturing process. For example, there can be yarn waste due to tufting beam waste, production beam waste and/or warping beam waste. A cause of waste is the inability to effectively determine the amount of yarn that is needed for a particular piece of carpet. As yarn is fed into a tufting machine it may be realized that yarn length for one color in a pattern is too short while yarn length for another color in the pattern is too long, resulting in wasted yarn. Large bobbins of yarn or beams of yarn compound the problem due to the sheer size of the yarn contained. A compact creel with smaller yarn packages reduces waste in the manufacturing process. Another significant problem is carpet overrun overage.
Therefore, a need exists for a compact creel that occupies less space on the manufacturing floor and reduces yarn waste in the manufacturing process, while enabling the same quantities of carpet production as that produced from a conventional creel.